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John Lofgren & Co. | Beach Cloth – Shawl Collar Jacket

John Lofgren & Co. is a relatively small company run by California native John Lofgren. Based in Sendai Japan, John’s label is a culmination of high quality, authenticity and eternal style. John has a long standing respect for vintage work-wear garments, and it shows in the clothes, footwear, and accessories he designs.

The classic Brown’s Beach jacket is an icon of 1920’s American style. The famous Worcester, Massachusetts based company were the originators for the elastic weave “that cannot rip or ravel -won’t ‘bind’ the arms”. Originally this jacket was meant as a lightweight top layer piece. There have been countless reproductions of this cloth over the years. Most of them are either too expensive, or too heavy. This is an excellent example of Japanese textile quality. The authentic vintage color and weave is quietly stylish, and incredibly lightweight. The pockets are trimmed with leather accents, and the simple cat’s eye buttons give the jacket a little more charm. The fit has a tailored feeling to it, and I feel the weave has a little elasticity in it. The tagline of the day was: “You can laugh at rain, cold and wind… when you wear This Famous Jacket”. I think I feel a chuckle coming on.

One design feature that popped out at me was the concealable throat-button loop, which keeps things very tidy at the neck-line. The sheer amount of subtle details in this jacket is quite amazing. John obviously spent a lot of time designing this jacket. The craftspeople who produced it, have done a wonderful job constructing it. You can connect with one of these at Speedway.